16 Water Manning~Fastest Manning Technique Yet!
Water Manning~Fastest Manning Technique Yet! 17
Water Manning
Fastest Manning Technique Yet!
Article and
photography by
Steve Jones
Dayton, WY
F
alconers have been using
water to help man birds
since, well, probably the
first falconer. Frederick II wrote
about it in great detail in his wonder ful book The Art of Falconr y.
The last few years, some of us
have been taking it a step further,
with great results. This technique
unfortunately has become known
by the not very politically correct
term “water-boarding.” Maybe we
could start calling it “the supersoaker method” or “dunking” or
something. Anyway, it entails not
just getting a bird wet, but super
wet. It is generally used on freshlytrapped birds or birds right out
of the chamber, but it can also be
used on inter-mewed birds to correct behavioral issues (more on
that later). It is common knowledge among falconers that wet
birds are reluctant to bate, but
what we have found is that if you
get them very, very wet they simply
stop bating completely!
18 Water Manning~Fastest Manning Technique Yet!
Water Manning~Fastest Manning Technique Yet! 19
Dale Mutch, left, and author dunking a gyrkin. Photo by Joe Roy III.
T
o accomplish this you
simply get the hooded
bird on your fist. Use an
old glove because it will get soaked.
Pull the leash tight, holding its feet
snug on your fist, and have an assistant cast the bird from behind,
leaving its feet on your glove. Lower
the bird and your fist into a tub of
water up to the bird’s neck. You
need to hold its head up because
as soon as you start lowering it
into the water, it will want to put
its head down, which would put it
under water. You obviously don’t
want to drown your bird. You can
hold the top knot on the hood with
your free hand to hold its head out
of the water. Another method is
to have the person that is casting
it hold the hood braces under his
thumbs on the bird’s back. This
will prevent the bird from putting
it’s head down and will also free up
your hand. You can then use your
free hand to help work water into
its feathers. The person casting the
bird can also gently pull the bird’s
wings out from its body a little, allowing the areas under its wings to
get wet. When you are satisfied the
bird is thoroughly wet, remove it
from the water and have the per-
Wetting a bird even more after being dunked.
son that did the casting put it up
on your fist. It may bate or fall off
but that’s okay, just get it back on
the fist. By the way, a good trick to
get a reluctant bird back on your
fist is to grab it by the tail instead
of the body. Get the entire tail in
your free hand about halfway down
the tail and use it as a lever to put
them back on the fist. You can even
hold them on the fist for a bit while
they decide to grip the fist and stay
there. You won’t hurt it, and you
won’t pull feathers out. It works better than grabbing the body because
many birds, especially gyrs, don’t
like being touched; plus, you can
hold on to it better than you can
their body. Dan Konkel taught me
this trick and it felt very unnatural
at first. I was worried I would pull
tail feathers out or break them. I
was also concerned about breaking
or straining the fleshy part of the
tail. My concerns were unfounded. I
have now used it on dozens of birds,
and Konkel and crew have used it
on literally hundreds without ever
having a problem.
Once you have the soaking
wet bird back on your fist you can
proceed to wet it even more. Use a
spray bottle or even a garden hose
20 Water Manning~Fastest Manning Technique Yet!
Water Manning~Fastest Manning Technique Yet! 21
to wet any areas, except the head,
that are still dry. The hardest part
to get wet is under the wings. Once
you are convinced the bird couldn’t
get any more saturated, wet it some
more. Now you are ready to take the
hood off, even with a bird fresh out
of the trap or chamber, and in full
daylight, and in front of people and
dogs, or anything else. Most birds
will bate a few times. Help it back
on the fist if necessary. When a bird
is this wet it has a hard time regaining the fist. If it bates more than a
few times it needs to be wetter. Let
me repeat that, if it keeps bating
it is not wet enough! Many don’t
even bate once. It’s like a switch
flips in their head and the bating
is turned off. Until you see it in
person it’s hard to appreciate how
well it works. It’s hard to believe a
bird that is still completely wild will
sit the fist in broad daylight without
bating, but it’s true.
irds vary in how wet they
have to be to get this
“switch” to flip. I have
seen this done on over a hundred
birds and every one stopped bating.
Some very stubborn individuals had
to be sprayed a lot, even after being
dunked. I had to keep spraying one
particularly stubborn gyrkin for half
an hour, and drained two big spray
bottles before he quit bating, but
most take much less to get them
to sit the fist nicely. A lot of them
don’t even bate once. You now have
a couple off hours where you can do
some intensive manning. You could
even stretch it longer if you spray
them occasionally to keep them
wet. Some especially wild birds will
still bate occasionally, but if it’s
more than once every five minutes
the bird is not wet enough. Most
will simply sit there.
When birds are this wet they
get cold easily, even gyrs, so if it
starts shivering, take it somewhere
warmer. This method does have the
advantage of keeping birds from
overheating, which is frequently a
problem with traditional manning.
During this manning session, do
everything the bird will let you,
which will be more than you expect.
They not only don’t bate, they
also don’t dodge the hood near as
B
Joe Roy III manning a very wet gyrfalcon. It will be hooded hundreds of times during this one manning session.
Dale Mutch has just finished
wetting down a gyrkin that is
fresh out of the barn, and is
preparing to remove the hood.
The hood comes off in broad
daylight. This bird has never
been handled before.
And it just sits there! It’s hard
to see how wet this bird is in
these photos, but rest ashured,
it’s dripping wet.
22 Water Manning~Fastest Manning Technique Yet!
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Birds being weathered for the first time. The lawn sprinkler keeps them wet and, therefore, settled.
much. They also don’t bite or foot
as much. Hood it over and over,
maybe five hundred times over the
two hours. Yes, I said five hundred.
Stroke it. Mess with its feet and its
tail. Walk through the yard with the
dogs. Anything you can think off.
Just remember, if it’s baiting a lot,
it’s not wet enough.
ou can try to feed them,
but when they are wet
they don’t really want to
do anything, including eat. After I
am done with the training session,
I usually hood them and leave them
alone for a few hours on a safe perch
to finish drying. I then take them
up and give them a chance to feed
on the fist. This is done inside and
is much more like traditional manning, except that the room doesn’t
have to be as dimly lit. There is a
kind of lag-effect from the earlier
Y
dunking. Most of the time, even
though the bird is completely dry,
it will still sit the fist fairly well,
much better than if had never been
dunked. It’s common to get them to
eat at least a few tidbits the first day.
Hooding will be much less of a fight
too, which shouldn’t be a surprise
because you have already hooded it
five hundred times. With traditional
manning you probably wouldn’t
hood the bird five hundred times
in the entire first year.
If you do a repeat water-boarding session the next day, or even
later the same day, you generally
don’t have to get the bird near as
wet to get the “switch” to flip. Most
can just be heavily sprayed with
a spray bottle if they had been
dunked in the last day or two, but
again if they are bating a lot they
are not wet enough.
Birds manned this way tame
down much faster, and there is far
less stress on both the falcon and
the falconer. They also eat much
sooner. Dan Konkel figures it puts
you at least a week ahead.
When you are ready to weather
a bird the first time you can use
water here too. Simply put a lawn
sprinkler on them and they will
sit nicely. It will also make picking
them up easier. Again, be careful in
cold weather.
Inter-mewed birds can also
benefit from water-boarding sessions. Reclaiming a particularly wild
bird after the molt is made much
easier. It has also been used to help
get birds over being hood-shy. I am
sure there are many other situations
where creative falconers will
find use for this technique.
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